Now, I really don’t believe in voodoo,
but at this point I caught myself thinking,
“What harm could it do to apologise?”
So, as we pulled up, I blurted to Arno:
“You are the best skipper! Please just get
Nkissito lift the curse. I will never insult
the skipper again.” To which Arno replied:
“She’ll lift the curse, but beware, you
might get what you want.”The tarpon were still rolling and lo
and behold, two minutes later I heard,
“I’m in, I’m in!” – only this time it was me
shouting. The fish ran, peeling off some
100m of gel spun and then jumped, at
which point I could clearly see the size of
it. “Damn, thisis a big fish!” Then the
realisation of what was coming hit me –
at least two hours of pain!Fighting this fish took it all out of me.
It came to the boat more than 15 times
and armed with a 12-wt fly rod, there is
only one boss. Finally, after about two
and a half hours, the fish was leadered,
measured and successfully released.The measurements sounded wrong at
first, but looking at Schalk, who is 6’4”,
the measurements were right. The girth
was 48 inches and the length 92 inches,
which puts the fish at a whopping 280lb!But for me, it didn’t matter about the
weight of the fish, she was an old girl
(definitely older than 50) and over 2m
long. She had demanded and earned my
respect. All I can say is: Good luck to the
next guy tangling with her!36 | AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019 | TCFF